JongHyun laid on his back and phone in the air above his face as he typed away. After finishing up their lunch, he dropped Krystal off back home and came home himself. He laid on his bed, hoping to disobey his biological clock and get some sleep even though it was still bright and sunny outside. Clearly, it didn't work, so here he was, typing away on a notepad with whatever he could think of for his current projects. If Jessica was really serious about living abroad in New York with him, he had better finish all these project he had on hand. Just thinking about that amount of work he had to complete in such a small frame of time was enough to give him a small anxiety attack.

How was he suppose to tell his boss anyways? Maybe he should give Kris a heads-up first. JongHyun exited the notepad and touched the MMS entry for 'Kris'. He hesitated though, “ Maybe I can wait until Sica gives me an explanation.”

JongHyun just gave up on his previous idea of informing his boss, “Maybe later.” he mumbled to himself as he went back to writing.

Not even ten minutes passed before his screen froze for half a second and his phone lit up with a new screen displaying not a number, but a familiar name.

“ Hi Mom.” JongHyun put the phone to his ear and rolled over onto his side so that the phone is on the ear that's not flat against his pillow.

“ What are you doing? ”

He thought for a second, “ Nothing. Just laying around the house.”

“ Ohh...”

“ Why'd you call me, Mom?” He wasn't actually expecting to get an answer.

Before JongHyun got a response from his mother, he heard her laugh in the background while talking to who he thought was his grandmother. He was surprised; he was just really amazed at how he could miss his mother's crazy laughter like that.

“ Oh, Jjong-ah, sorry. I'm a bit busy right now.” she finally responded.

JongHyun smiled, “It's fine. Tell grandma I said hi.”

“I will.” he could almost see his mother smiling cheerfully, “Come visit soon. Bring the Jung sisters too.” JongHyun knew that his mother liked the two of them.

“ Don't worry, I will. I'll hang up first then. Bye~” With that, JongHyun hung up.

His mother would never say, but she really just wanted to hear her son's voice. It suddenly occurred to him that he would have to tell her eventually about his trip to America to live abroad. If he went to America, he wasn't sure if she could anymore. JongHyun didn't know if she knew how to operate a computer to webcam.

He felt bad, as a son.

He laid in bed and thought about how he'd tell her. He knew his mother well enough though, to know that she would support his decision and show no opposition. He turned and stared at the blank ceiling; what about Sica though? He missed her at the same time.

JongHyun was ready to give up on the situation when he conveniently began to fall into sleep.

She tossed her keys onto the coffee table as she stepped into her own apartment, but the keys flew a bit too far and slid off the table onto the floor. Jessica stopped for half a second to look, but decided that she actually won't care about that until she needed her house keys again. That was just how she lived and when she's in a foreign city living as a single woman in her twenties, she truthfully thinks that her living style was fine. Essentially, it could probably be summed up in a few words if one tries and in one word if one didn't try; that word would be lazy.

Following her house keys, she tossed her jacket onto the sofa near the same coffee table. She likes to relax as she as she arrives in her living headquarters; Jessica tends to immediately strip off all unnecessary “add-on”s. After throwing away the keys, the jacket usually comes the necklaces, the rings, the bags.

Jessica looked at the clock as she headed straight for the kitchen. She was literally starving; she opened the fridge, but it was near empty with the exception of half an eaten apple, a tub of kimchi, and miscellaneous quick food that was meant for the microwave. The tub of kimchi was pretty much what she ate with everything; it was the biggest in portion, but only because a nice co-worker's mother saw that she was Korean like herself, but living by herself in New York and thought it must've been hard on her.

Jessica closed the fridge in disappointment, but soon remembered her loaf of bread bought a few days ago and began stuffing a piece of bread plain. She pulled up a chair to her kitchen table and opened the curtains to let the sunshine pour in before she sat down at the table. It was only 12 noon, but it's already been a long day for her, “Too freaking long.” she thought as she laid her head on the side on the kitchen table, “Should I really tell JongHyun to come?”

Jessica was really scared that it was too selfish a decision for her to make because she knew that she was beginning to feel lonely in New York by herself. She had friends, friends like Tiffany, but she too missed JongHyun. She miss being able to call him up after work to catch a bite, or just calling him to ask if he had a day off when she did so they could simply hang at her house and drink. The job offers in New York were awfully seducing and she knew she had to give up a good friend's companionship to adventure in the glamorous New York.

It was becoming a bit too much though and sometimes, she would come home from work at the crack of sunlight after attending to jobs as assistants and other work, yet other times, she had to rise at ungodly hours of the day to be out in the wilderness capturing the sunrise as a backdrop to the photoshoot. Jessica would come home like today and then curl up on her sofa and cry.

She cried about her frustration of not being able to sleep as much as she wanted anymore. She cried about missing her family, not having the sister she grew up with and the father who spoiled both of his daughters. She missed speaking Korean, and then she too missed JongHyun, her best friend.

She saw that the time was slowly approaching 12:30 and it was getting later in Korea, but she was just so tired. She wanted to talk to JongHyun about her life here, but her laptop was such an unbelievable distance from her. It was charging on the floor of her living room near her TV and her favorite SLR. Jessica could easily see it, yet the motivation to grab it took a good ten minutes. Since she was then already in the living room, she propped the computer on the living room coffee table and then laid on the sofa herself after moving her jacket.

Skype appeared on her desktop. She meant to sign in, but she hesitated, “I already mailed him the plane ticket...how do I explain the details?” She thought of various stupid little excuses, but she found them of too little credibility and knew that JongHyun would suspect her right off the bat. Jessica gave up and stopped rehearsing; it wasn't going to make things much better. She didn't want to lie either.

When she signed in, she found JongHyun online as expected. She first messaged him:

Jessica Jung: Hey, are you asleep?

She waited a few minutes while staring at the computer screen, then closed her eyes for a few before she heard the ring noise.

Kim Jjong: wasits2. wEbcam?

Jessica looked at the screen at saw his typing and figured he really was sleeping. He must be squinting at the bright computer screen right now. She replied with a yes and he called over immediately.

They connected a few moments later.

She saw his image first and laughed aloud. To her, he looked ridiculously not awake and to himself, his reactions were still half a beat delayed, but what he did know was that he heard a very familiar and pleasing laughter. JongHyun had always loved it when Jessica laughed; it had a pleasant ring and was something that he didn't admit, but gave him a flutter inside.

“ Yah, Jung Jessica, what are you laughing at?” He squinted one eye big and the other still resting lazily.

“ Your eyes though...” Okay, she admits that she was being quite immature, but it was true that small things like that made her laugh. Either that, or JongHyun just makes her laugh. Their sense of humor seemed to click.

“ Tsch.” JongHyun tisked as he scratched his head and stretched, “ I'll be right back.” She saw him stumble out the room. He wanted to properly wake up because he actually had things he wanted to ask her.

Meanwhile, Jessica took the chance to run to her bedroom too and quickly slip into her house clothes which consisted of a large tee and some shorts. While she was at it, she tied up the hair at the crown of her head too; that portion of hair always bothered her. This way it would be conveniently out of her way.

She was back in front of her camera before he was, and as she stared at the poorly lit white wall of his and the empty unmade bed, she was second guessing how good an idea it really was to ask JongHyun to come to New York. If Jessica really wanted, she probably could've somehow gotten her mother who lived in California to fly a mere 6-hour flight and move in with her, but she instead went out of her way to get JongHyun to come.

That was exactly why Jessica thought she was become increasingly eccentric by staying at New York. In other words, that letter was a just a big, fat lie; eccentric was a good way to say craziness too.

JongHyun broke Jessica's blank stare focused on the small window allotted for webcaming when he came back visibly more awake than he was before.

“Sica?”

She puffed a small sigh, “ Hey. ”

“...” JongHyun saw signs of distress written on her face.

Jessica saw that JongHyun wasn't talking, and she figured that he knew something was off, so by this point, she gave up on hiding things from her best friend. Fessing up might just be the better idea.

“ So, um, JongHyun? ”

“ Hm?”

“ You know how when we were in middle school, I totally was all for you being a writer and you were totally all for me being a photographer? ” She somehow thought framing her story with a cushion like that would cause less damage.

It wasn't exactly the reaction she wanted, but JongHyun nodded with quite possibly the most confused face she's seen since the rookie model who could not seem to express virtually any difference in expression even if Jessica had pointed a gun to her head while holding the camera with the other hand.

“ Well”, she continued, “ there were also times I thought I had a knack for writing.”

“ What's your point? ” Now JongHyun just felt plain offended because he thought he knew where she was going.

Jessica managed her best expression of 'whoopsies-that-was-an-accident', “...Well, you see, the whole analogy with the coin and New York and how absolutely wonderful and fantastic and awesome and amazing and inserts two hundred more positive adjectives was a big fat lie” By the end, not only had her innocent expression utterly crumbled, her guilt caught up with her that sentence of confession to sound like someone took the wavelength of audio and compressed it to fit a record length.

JongHyun took his sweet time comprehending the verbal vomit she just threw at him, so much that Jessica moved her mouse pointer to make sure JongHyun wasn't just lagging because he was moving too much.

When he opened his mouth, she knew that he had pretty much just been frozen in person and not on camera, “...1. you have talent, I agree. Ever so slightly. 2. wow, you should consider a radio side job.”

“ You think? ” She raised one eyebrow.

“ Totally.” He laughed.

Lying is and will always be one of the biggest crimes in Jessica's books, and when she lied, she was probably the last person to be okay with the lie, especially to her best friend. She wanted to blame her situation, she wanted to blame the 3 in the morning when she wrote that letter, blame that 5 in the morning when she mailed the letter, she wanted to blame herself—but JongHyun didn't. He was an idiot who laughed along, and that made her lose her discomfort.

She thought he defined best friend, but she was unaware that New York was at best second to the reason as to why JongHyun wanted to fly a good ten hours to America. The bigger secret that Jessica wasn't even able to find the decoding key to was the fact that she literally needed to talk to him...a lot, that she literally wanted to see his person, that she literally missed him really badly, and that she literally had a high chance of loving him.

____

Guise, school drains me to no end and I probably won't update for another infinity. I'm really, really sorry. I'll try, but weekend is literally all the time I have to do my things. On weekdays, I only have an hour or two to myself aside from homework if I'm lucky. 

On a side note, this chapter was written with long pauses in-between so please leave a note if there's ugly incoherency. Un-beta-ed.